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Something most land-bound souls don’t know or understand is the truth that a
worthy sailing craft has a soul. Born among the timber and sweat of the
craftsmen, bound to the heart of the captain and crew, the ship serves out her
life to further the end for which she was created.
But as so often happens
through the annals of maritime history, one unfortunate craft was captured,
brought down, laid low to the whims of its captors. Twisted and bent by the
evil intentions and shadowy purposes of a dark-hearted captain. What was once
La Concorde has been reborn in Hades’ fires to become the Queen Anne’s Revenge.
Held aloft and driven forth by a spirit that both fights against and for the
evil one that is her captain, should she ever break free of her hell-forged
shackles, pity the black soul of the madman known as Blackbeard.
It’s been ages since I built or reviewed a Lego Pirate model. Aside from a
review
I did last year of a clone brand (which in itself was pretty satisfying) the
last model I put together was probably one of the Armada ships back in 1997 (can
ya say ‘holy moley!’?). I’m a long-time fan of Pirate stuff and dang if they
aren’t great playing models but if you get too many of them there’s just no
place to display them (unless you have oodles of shelf space).
I’ve been very much looking forward to this new Pirate ship! Where I usually
wait a bit to pick up and review the newer models, there was just no waiting for
this baby. For the most part I’m not overly crazy about model/theme crossovers
with movies. I think the themes ought to be able to stand on their own merits,
but the new models look very promising toward reviving the line with some new
designs and some much needed additional structures (castle/buildings, alternate
locations like islands and such, and coaches).
The first thing to catch my attention on opening the box was the presence of a
poster (one side is a picture of the model, the other side is an odd collage of
cartoon depictions of the various characters for this theme). I was also
surprised to see a small playing card with the picture of the Blackbeard
character on it (maybe a different card comes with each set?), no stats or
details, just the picture of ‘beardy’.
The finished three mast model measures about 25 inches long by 19 inches high.
The craft mainly consists of a lower deck with six firing hatches on each side
of the ship (though there are only eight berths for cannon placement). Three
cannons are supplied to arm the ship (and this is the first time I’ve seen the
cannon elements in a chrome gun grey color..cool!) There’s a small upper deck
at the front of the ship, a rear second-level deck for the (somewhat enclosed)
captain’s quarters and there’s a third-level poopdeck for the ship’s navigation
wheel.
Throughout the ship’s design, there’s a distinct skeleton motif that is done
fairly well with a skeleton figure head, various torso/skulls/bones adorning the
sides ending with a large black lantern hanging off the end made up of, again,
more skeletal torsos. The nice touch of dark scarlet-hued sails bearing crossed
swords and a crown (instead of a giant skull and crossbones) is very welcome.
Pardon the pun, but there are boatloads of new parts (at least new to me)
including: somewhat different bow and stern sections, minifig size bottles, a
large cutlass, sand-tone tricorn hat, new hat/with hair elements (minor
complaint- the hats can’t be separated from the hair), a big beard element, pail
and handle, fiery skeleton torso, flaired ladder sections and bone elements (2
and 5 studs long). There’s also the cool use of the new ‘trophy’ element that
is painted like an idol/statue of some sort. Decals/stickers are included for
the firing hatches and windows.
Specific figures include Jack Sparrow, Angelica, Blackbeard (comes with the
aforementioned big beard element but also has a good face/beard paint so you can
go without using the atrociously large beard element if you so desire),
quartermaster, chef, two ‘zombie’ pirates, plus two complete skeletons that are
part of the ship’s design.
There’s a LOT of satisfaction with the build of this boat. Throughout the build
there was a definite feeling that the designers specifically went out of their
way to come up with new ideas. In essence, there’s a feel of evolutionary
design rather than just copying what has been done before: The hull sections
use technic pieces instead of bricks to connect to each other, the sail booms
are made up of technic elements instead of the standard plate constructions
we’ve seen in the past and there is a lot of detail that goes into building up
the sides and cabin walls (lots of smaller parts make up the more than 1000
piece count for the additional detail).
If there’s any complaint at all, it might be that I would have liked some more
deck levels but I really can’t complain about the final product, it was worth
the money and makes for a beautiful display or play model.
!!! 4x2ReVu Stats !!!
Rating: Eight out of eight studs.
Pros: Terrific, new design for a ship that isn’t necessarily just for
pirates/bad guys (if you can overlook the overabundance of skeletal remains that
adorn the whole thing). Great details in the design and it comes with a
poster!
Walletwise: 1094 pieces for around $120.
Date: 5/2/11
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Ian McShane Joins Disney in Reveal of LEGO Captain Jack Sparrow Life-Size
Statue
Earlier this evening, Disney Consumer Products debuted new lines of toys from
LEGO and JAKKS Pacific for this summer’s blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean
4: On Stranger Tides. Highlights of the event included appearances by
production designer John Myhre and Ian McShane who takes on the role of
Blackbeard, the pirate all pirates fear.
As part of the event, Disney and LEGO unveiled a six foot tall ‘life-size’
statue of Captain Jack Sparrow, the first of its kind. The highly detailed
statue, which includes a removable sword, consists of approximately 150,000 LEGO
bricks and took more than 200 man hours to design and build. Approximately 70 of
those hours alone were used in the creation of Jack’s head which was all done
without the assistance of computers.
Also taking place during the event, Ian McShane was presented with his very own
one-off custom Blackbeard transforming pirate which reveals the pirate’s curse
when placed under blacklight. Production designer John Myhre, who talked at
length about the fiery and skeletal details of the Queen Anne’s Revenge and
Blackbeard himself, received a limited edition print of the ship from Acme
Archives.
Attendees also got a preview of the LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean video game
after viewing the trailer for the film.
LEGO 2011 Pirates of Caribbean sets list:
4181 Isla De la Muerta
4182 The Cannibal Escape
4183 The Mill
4191 The Captain’s Cabin
4192 Fountain of Youth
4193 The London Escape
4194 Whitecap Bay
4195 Queen Anne’s Revenge
Pictures and trailer are on the websites listed.
Source:
stichkingdom.com
MTV.com
-end of report-
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In lugnet.mediawatch, John P. Henderson wrote:
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Another thing to consider is that licensed themes, contrary to popular
griping, almost certainly keep costs down. ...(snip)... To me that says
that they either don’t know what they’re
talking about, or what they’re really trying to say is that they regret the
passage of time taking the primary market in a direction that’s different
from what they’d prefer to see.
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Good points, all. And I must confess to at least sometimes being in the
latter group.
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Okay, so here’s a question I have for you. If the PotC theme results in the
release of a set based on Sao Feng’s junk, would that appease you? Not saying
that I expect it to happen, but I realized today that it is something they would
be able to produce under the current license, and which I very much hope they
do.
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Subject:
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Brickworld 2011 - Registration Open
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events.brickworld, lugnet.fun.community, lugnet.announce, lugnet.general, lugnet.events, lugnet.robotics, lugnet.trains, lugnet.castle, lugnet.pirates, lugnet.space, lugnet.people
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.events.brickworld
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Jan 2011 03:47:36 GMT
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Highlighted:
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(details)
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99560 times
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Hello everyone,
We are happy to announce that Brickworld registration is now open. We have been
hard at work performing a complete overhaul on the registration process. In
response to your feedback in the survey after last year’s event, we have done a
couple things to the event. Some items that impact registration:
1.There are now 2 types of registration: Full and light. These are described on
the web site. But, essentially, full registration is for someone that is
contributing to the event and partaking in the workshops and presentations.
Light registration is for families that want to show up Friday afternoon, see
the event hall without the public, participate in weekend non-public activities,
and learn from the AFOLs and TFOLs.
2.The full registration will be capped at 650 people to keep things from being
unmanagable.
3.When you register for the event, you aren’t considered registered until you
pay (the new process leads you through this)
4.The event will start on Wednesday evening with opening ceremonies later in the
evening. This will lead to having most of the display space available for MoC
setup starting on Thursday morning instead of Thursday evening. Essentially, we
are spreading the event out a bit so it is more relaxing for everyone. The
survey feedback indicated there was too much happening in too small a space in
time.
Don’t forget to sign up for your hotel rooms too. Last year the hotel filled up.
And, if you are a first time attendee, everyone will tell you that it makes the
event a lot more fun to be at the hotel.
You can register at the Brickworld web site.
We hope you like the new process and the changes to the event. We are all very
excited about Brickworld 2011.
We hope to see you all in Chicago at the Westin North Shore in Wheeling, IL.
June 15th through 19th.
Warm Regards, The Brickworld Team
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In lugnet.mediawatch, John P. Henderson wrote:
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True, but similar comments could be made of any theme.
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And they often are. How many times have you seen complaints about how the Town
theme largely consisted of a 3-year repeating schedule of police, fire
department, and hospital stuff? Only in the last couple years have they started
to really branch out into civilian stuff like they used to do 20ish years ago.
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The truth is, how a tall ship is trimmed makes a notable difference, as it
would have in the real world.
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True, but I recall at least one ship in the original Pirates line that looked
like someone had stolen half the sails. And to a parent, one ship is not that
different from the next, which can kill a theme.
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Also, like with Castle, Pirates could be so much more than a few ships and
islands.
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Also true, but it never really was. Did they ever once do a straight merchant
ship, or were they always pirates and soldiers? It’s not that there weren’t
possibilities, just that they always stuck to the few core elements until they’d
beaten them into the ground.
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The recent (and arguably expensive) Medieval Market set was an example of
a “civilian” set for Castle. Pirates could always do well with similar
merchant ports... Though I don’t expect a POTC theme to include such.
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Tortuga Island filled with minifig hookers doesn’t do it for you, huh?
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